Mammography is a routine procedure for breast cancer screening and diagnosis. Penetration difficulties associated with traditional X-ray mammography technology, however, can cause both sensitivity and specificity to deteriorate for large, dense, or young breasts. MRI procedures provide a good alternative for addressing and/or overcoming such difficulties.
Although a 821 patient study at 1.5T revealed that breast MRI has a sensitivity of e.g., 88.1% and specificity of 67.7%, which may not be enough to replace mammography procedures, (see Bluemke, et al., JAMA, vol. 292, n. 22, p. 2735, the entire disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference), it may be reasonable to expect that at higher fields, such as 7T, there may provide a significant performance improvement in breast MRI procedures.
Currently, there are a number of 7T MRI scanner types, and these scanners generally focus on brain MRI procedures. It is believed that no 7T breast MRI has yet been performed previously using the exemplary embodiments of the present invention as shall be described in detail below. Since the typical size and the dielectric constants of the breast are relatively small, the dielectric resonance effect and high specific absorption rate (SAR), which can be problematic in high fields of 7T and above, may not be pronounced.